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February 21 2005
At Risk Teens
`Angel' helps at-risk teens
Detention officer touches girls' lives with kindness
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
Lew Stamp / Akron Beacon Journal
Sherri Hankton tries to be a good role model for teens.
At Risk Teens-Sherri Hankton's most treasured possessions fit in a couple of boxes.
They're letters and trinkets from dozens of the at risk teens she has mentored over the years, teens with troubled pasts in whom she sees not problems, but potential. The mementos are so important to her, she said, that she wants them buried with her.
She pulls out a letter at random and opens an envelope adorned with hearts drawn in orange and green marker. ``I miss you so much,'' the letter said. ``You've always been there for me.... You'll always be a stepmom to me and I will always love you.''
Another came from an at risk teen girl who'd struggled with an addiction to crack. ``Mrs. H, to a lot of us teen girls you are a blessing,'' she wrote. ``You are like an angel from God.''
Hankton, 44, of Fairlawn, considers shepherding at-risk teens to be her purpose. She lavishes attention on young people as a detention officer with the Summit County Juvenile Court, a job she calls ``my destiny.'' She ran a mentoring organization for at risk teen girls for seven years until health problems and lack of funding forced her to quit. She and her husband, Otis, have taken several young at risk teens into their home over the years.
She figures she did something right in raising her own children, who never were at risk growing up. ``So I had to give back,'' she said.
Teens have long been important to Hankton and her husband, who were always known as Aunt Sherri and Uncle Butch in the neighborhood, her daughter Nikki Mann said. ``Our house was kind of the neighborhood house,'' Mann said. ``... They made you feel welcome.''
To some at risk teens, the Hanktons became more than an honorary aunt and uncle. The couple have opened their home for months or even years to several at risk teens who've had trouble at home. One of them, Narrissa Staples, now 22 -- the Hanktons' niece -- is considered just another of their children, along with daughters Nikki Mann, Terri Mann and Whitney Hankton and 6-month-old granddaughter Danyelle Council.
What sets her mother apart, Nikki Mann said, is her faith in the potential of the at risk teens she mentors. ``She doesn't look at (at risk teens) for what she sees,'' Mann said. ``She looks at what they can become, where they can go.''
That faith led Hankton to found the mentoring group ANGELS -- Accepting Nice at risk teen Girls to Enjoy Life Socially -- in 1995 to show at-risk teen-agers they could have fun without engaging in illegal or immoral activity. They met every day after school and on Saturdays for a dinner cooked by Hankton's husband and activities that included slumber parties, outings and out-of-town trips.
Even a stroke Hankton suffered in 2000 didn't keep her from her beloved at risk teen girls for long. ``As soon as I was able to recover, I went right back,'' she said.
Hankton and her husband financed most of the group's activities with assistance from their church, Good Shepherd Baptist, and some of the participants' parents. But in 2002, when the money was running out and Hankton suffered a transient ischemic attack, or ``ministroke,'' she had to give up the group.
It didn't end her commitment to at risk teens, however. She joined the juvenile detention center, where she considers herself a role model rather than a guard. She doesn't focus on the crimes her at risk teens charges have committed, she said, but rather on trying to instill conscience in them.
She's as comfortable joking or playing games with them as she is standing up to their back talk or challenging their behavior. She lets them know they can confide in her, but she makes it clear she won't keep damaging secrets.
``I'm not your friend,'' she tells them. ``I'm a leader. I'm a mentor, and I'm an adult.''
Obviously, they respond. At Risk Teens call her at all hours, including when she's at work. Her cell phone's voice mailbox is filled with their messages. Letters from those she'd touched arrive nearly every day.
Giving to so many is demanding, but Hankton draws perseverance from her faith. She became a Christian, she said, after fleeing an abusive marriage and meeting her current husband, an associate pastor at their church.
That faith makes her certain she'll achieve her latest dream, opening a home to house young girls from troubled families.
``I'm blessed,'' she said, throwing her arms wide and beaming. ``It's gonna happen. I already know it.''
Mary Beth Breckenridge is a Beacon Journal staff writer.
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